Psych 56L/ Ling 51: Acquisition of Language

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Psych 56L/ Ling 51Acquisition of Language

• Lecture 12
• Development of Syntax Morphology II

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Announcements

• Homework 2 due today
• No office hours 11/13 or 11/18 (please email to
  set up an appointment if you need to see me)

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From One Word to Many
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Beyond Single Word Speech

• Vertical constructions before producing two-word
  utterances, some children utter successive
  single-word utterances that seem to be related to
  each other in meaning

Ex little girl pointing to her infected eye
Ow. Eye.
Why not a two-word utterance Ow - eye!?
Intonation indicated these were single word
utterances.
Often vertical constructions build on words
previously said around/to the child. Your eye
looks red, sweetie! Ow. Eye.
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Beyond Single Word Speech

• Unanalyzed combinations most children have
  transitional forms that combine multiple words,
  but which the child doesnt realize are multiple
  words

Ex Iwant (I want), Idunno (I dont know)
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Productive Word Combination

• Productive being able to use known vocabulary in
  different combinations

sit
cookie
daddy
juice
mommy
little
sleep
wet
more
hot
two
blue
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Productive Word Combination

• Productive being able to use known vocabulary in
  different combinations

sit
cookie
daddy
juice
mommy
little
daddy
cookie
sleep
daddys cookie
wet
more
hot
two
blue
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Productive Word Combination

• Productive being able to use known vocabulary in
  different combinations

sit
cookie
daddy
juice
mommy
little
cookie
daddy
sleep
cookie to daddy
wet
more
hot
two
blue
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Productive Word Combination

• Productive being able to use known vocabulary in
  different combinations

sit
cookie
daddy
juice
mommy
little
more
cookie
sleep
more cookies
wet
more
hot
two
blue
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Productive Word Combination

• Productive being able to use known vocabulary in
  different combinations

sit
cookie
daddy
juice
mommy
little
more
juice
sleep
more juice
wet
more
hot
two
blue
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Productive Word Combination

• Productive being able to use known vocabulary in
  different combinations

sit
cookie
daddy
juice
mommy
little
two
cookie
sleep
two cookies
wet
more
hot
two
blue
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Productive Word Combination

• Productive being able to use known vocabulary in
  different combinations

sit
cookie
daddy
juice
mommy
little
mommy
wet
sleep
mommys wet
wet
more
hot
two
blue
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Productive Word Combination

• Productive being able to use known vocabulary in
  different combinations

sit
cookie
daddy
juice
mommy
little
wet
daddy
sleep
daddys wet
wet
more
hot
two
blue
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Productive Word Combination

• Productive being able to use known vocabulary in
  different combinations

sit
cookie
daddy
juice
mommy
little
daddy
sit
sleep
daddys sitting
wet
more
hot
two
blue
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Meaning of Word Combinations

• Although children can express a variety of
  meaning with two-word utterances, childrens
  first word combination tend to be limited in
  their range of relational meaning.

relational meaning referring to relation between
referents Ex my teddy --gt teddy belongs to me,
relationship between me and teddy
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Meaning of Word Combinations

• Some types of relational meaning

agent action Daddy sit action
object drive car agent object Mommy
sock agent location sit chair entity
location toy floor possessor possession my
teddy entity attribute crayon
big demonstrative entity this telephone
Note how these differ from Ow. Eye.
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Beyond Two Words

• Even when children produce multiword utterances,
  they still produce single word utterances.
  Point childrens development measured by the
  maximum number of words they produce in a given
  utterance.

When children start to put 3 words together, many
are combinations of the relational meanings
expressed in the two word stage.
I watching cars I watching watching
cars Put it table Put it it table
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Beyond Two Words

• Early sentences tend to be imperatives
  (commands), as well as affirmative, declarative
  statements. Questions and negations come later.

Imperative Dance with them! Affirmative,
declarative I dance with them.
Question Can I dance with them? Negation I
dont dance with them.
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Beyond Two Words
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Beyond Two Words
Imperatives dominate early on, then taper off.
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Beyond Two Words
Declaratives always a fairly large proportion
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Beyond Two Words
Questions always a fairly small proportion
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Telegraphic Speech

• Typical grammatical categories included in
  childrens multiword speech nouns, verbs,
  adjectives

Typical categories missing determiners (the, a),
prepositions (to, by, from), auxiliary verbs (am,
are, was), bound morphemes (-s plural marker)
Basic division of meaning more contentful vs.
more grammatical You can communicate quite well
without the more grammatical categories.
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Morphological Development

• Between 2 and 3 years old, children begin adding
  in the more grammatical categories - in
  particular the bound morphemes.

Usage of bound morpheme (either -ing progressive
or -s plural) when required
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Morphological Development

• Between 2 and 3 years old, children begin adding
  in the more grammatical categories - in
  particular the bound morphemes.

Usage of bound morpheme (either -ing progressive
or -s plural) when required
Development is gradual, though there are large
ranges - not all bound morphemes come in at the
same time
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Morphological Development

• The order of acquisition for bound morphemes in
  English does appear to be similar across
  different children, however (even if their rates
  of development are quite different).

But what about development crosslinguistically?
Remember, English is fairly impoverished
morphologically when compared to languages like
Hungarian. English the goblin always the
same form Hungarian the goblin may have up to
16 different forms, depending on what the
goblin s role in the sentence is
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Morphological Development

• Note Morphologically rich languages are not
  necessarily more difficult for children to learn.
  Regular/predictable systems are easier for
  children to learn than languages that have
  multiple exceptions (like English often does).

• Regularity vs. exceptions in English (ex past
  tense)
• We laughed.
• We hugged.
• We danced.
• We singed. (We sang.)
• We runned. (We ran.)

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Morphological Development

• Note Morphologically rich languages are not
  necessarily more difficult for children to learn.
  Regular/predictable systems are easier for
  children to learn than languages that have
  multiple exceptions (like English often does).

• Regular morphologically rich language Turkish
• Inflected forms seem no harder for Turkish
  children to acquire. In fact, they often produce
  inflected forms (equivalent to English laughed)
  before they even combine words in multiple word
  utterances.

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Morphological Development

• Other factors that help make morphology easier to
  learn
• - high frequency (more frequent morphemes are
  easier)
• - regularity in form (morpheme is always the
  same)
• - fixed position relative to the stem (ex
  morpheme always attaches to the end of the word)
• - morpheme is easy to recognize as separate from
  the stem (ex laugh ed)
• - rhythm of language makes morpheme perceptually
  salient (ex receives stress)

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Development of Sentence Forms

• Not all sentence forms are created equal - some
  are harder to get the hang of than others.

Negation requires use of negative word and
auxiliary verb
Stage 1 external negative marker No wipe
finger. No the sun shining. No mitten. Wear
mitten no.
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Development of Sentence Forms

• Not all sentence forms are created equal - some
  are harder to get the hang of than others.

Negation requires use of negative word and
auxiliary verb
Stage 2 internal negative marker I cant see
you. I dont like you. I no want envelope.
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Development of Sentence Forms

• Not all sentence forms are created equal - some
  are harder to get the hang of than others.

Negation requires use of negative word and
auxiliary verb
Stage 3 auxiliary constructions I didnt did
it. Donna wont let go. No, it isnt.
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Development of Sentence Forms

• Not all sentence forms are created equal - some
  are harder to get the hang of than others.

Questions yes/no questions vs. wh-questions
Yes/No Questions that can be answered with
yes/no. Usually require permutation of main verb
and auxiliary verb, or insertion of dummy do in
English.
Can we dance with all the goblins? (from We can
dance) We can dance with all the goblins
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Development of Sentence Forms

• Not all sentence forms are created equal - some
  are harder to get the hang of than others.

Questions yes/no questions vs. wh-questions
Yes/No Questions that can be answered with
yes/no. Usually require permutation of main verb
and auxiliary verb, or insertion of dummy do in
English.
Did we dance with all the goblins? (from We
danced) We did dance with all the goblins.
We danced with all the goblins.
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Development of Sentence Forms

• Not all sentence forms are created equal - some
  are harder to get the hang of than others.

Questions yes/no questions vs. wh-questions
Wh-Questions Questions that begin with wh
words. Require permutation of auxiliary verbs and
use of wh word.
Who can we dance with? (from We can dance
with) We can dance with who
We can dance with all the goblins
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Development of Sentence Forms

• Not all sentence forms are created equal - some
  are harder to get the hang of than others.

Questions yes/no questions vs. wh-questions
Stage 1 external question marker Y/N I ride
train? Sit chair? Wh What cowboy doing? What a
bandaid is?
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Development of Sentence Forms

• Not all sentence forms are created equal - some
  are harder to get the hang of than others.

Questions yes/no questions vs. wh-questions
Stage 2 auxiliaries without inversion in
wh Y/N Does the kitty stand up? Did I caught
it? Wh Where the other Joe will drive? Why kitty
cant stand up?
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Development of Sentence Forms

• Not all sentence forms are created equal - some
  are harder to get the hang of than others.

Questions yes/no questions vs. wh-questions
Stage 3 auxiliaries with inversion in
wh Y/N (N/A) Wh What did you doed? What does
whiskey taste like?
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Development of Comprehension
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Getting to Childrens Knowedge

• Clever comprehension strategies children use

Use the order of words to predict who did what to
whom.
Works really well for active sentences The
knight bumped the dwarf. but not so well for
passives The knight was bumped by the dwarf.
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Getting to Childrens Knowedge

• Clever comprehension strategies children use

Use the order of words to predict who did what to
whom.
Works really well for sentences where
order-of-mention is the order of action Jareth
threw off his disguise before Hoggle
cowered. but not so well for ones where its
not Hoggle cowered after Jareth threw off his
disguise.
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Getting to Childrens Knowedge

• Clever comprehension strategies children use

Use world knowledge to figure out likely sequence
of events.
Works really well for normal sentences Jareth
intimidated Hoggle. but not so well for ones
where the events are not predictable from world
knowledge Hoggle intimidated Jareth.
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Getting Around the Clever Strategies

• Using indirect methods like preferential looking
  paradigm, we can test childrens comprehension of
  multiword combinations even before they can only
  produce one word utterances themselves

Hirsh-Pasek Golinkoff (1991) 13- to 15-month
olds can comprehend improbable sentences with
relational properties like Shes kissing the
keys.
Hirsh-Pasek Golinkoff (1991) 16- to 18-month
olds can tell the difference between complex
questions like Where is Cookie Monster washing
Big Bird? and Where is Big Bird washing Cookie
Monster?
Children understand more about structural
relationships than they let on with their
production!
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Getting Around the Clever Strategies

• Just because children dont use grammatical
  morphemes in their own speech doesnt mean they
  dont understand that adults use them and they
  should use them, too.

Shipley, Smith, Gleitman (1969) children who
are telegraphic speakers prefer to respond to
full commands like Throw me the ball over their
own telegraphic versions (Throw ball)
Gerken McIntosh (1993) children are particular
about which grammatical morphemes occur where -
they can tell the difference between Find the
dog for me and Find was dog for me
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General Points

• Sequence of grammatical development that occurs
  in comprehension is like the sequence in
  production, but it occurs earlier.

Grammatical competence seems to be achieved
fairly early. However grammatical rules are
acquired, they must be acquired quickly. This
places constraints on what kind of developmental
theory can be proposed, because it must account
for this acquisition data.
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Another example of grammatical competence

• Comprehension of complex sentences

(from J. de Villiers 1995) Once there was a boy
who loved climbing trees in the forest. One
afternoon he slipped and fell to the ground. He
picked himself up and went home. That night when
he had a bath, he saw a big bruise on his arm.
He said to his Dad, I must have hurt myself when
I fell this afternoon.
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Another example of grammatical competence

• Comprehension of complex sentences

(from J. de Villiers 1995) Once there was a boy
who loved climbing trees in the forest. One
afternoon he slipped and fell to the ground. He
picked himself up and went home. That night when
he had a bath, he saw a big bruise on his arm.
He said to his Dad, I must have hurt myself when
I fell this afternoon.
When did the boy say he fell?
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Another example of grammatical competence

• Comprehension of complex sentences

(from J. de Villiers 1995) Once there was a boy
who loved climbing trees in the forest. One
afternoon he slipped and fell to the ground. He
picked himself up and went home. That night when
he had a bath, he saw a big bruise on his arm.
He said to his Dad, I must have hurt myself when
I fell this afternoon.
When did the boy say he fell? Ambiguous!
When did the boy say he fell? In the afternoon.
When did the boy say he fell? At night.
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Another example of grammatical competence

• Comprehension of complex sentences

(from J. de Villiers 1995) Once there was a boy
who loved climbing trees in the forest. One
afternoon he slipped and fell to the ground. He
picked himself up and went home. That night when
he had a bath, he saw a big bruise on his arm.
He said to his Dad, I must have hurt myself when
I fell this afternoon.
When did the boy say how he fell?
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Another example of grammatical competence

• Comprehension of complex sentences

(from J. de Villiers 1995) Once there was a boy
who loved climbing trees in the forest. One
afternoon he slipped and fell to the ground. He
picked himself up and went home. That night when
he had a bath, he saw a big bruise on his arm.
He said to his Dad, I must have hurt myself when
I fell this afternoon.
When did the boy say how he fell? Unambiguous
When did the boy say how he fell? In the
afternoon.
When did the boy say how he fell? At night.
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Another example of grammatical competence

• Comprehension of complex sentences

(from J. de Villiers 1995) Once there was a boy
who loved climbing trees in the forest. One
afternoon he slipped and fell to the ground. He
picked himself up and went home. That night when
he had a bath, he saw a big bruise on his arm.
He said to his Dad, I must have hurt myself when
I fell this afternoon.
Children as young as 3 years old have adult
interpretations!
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A cautionary note

• Sometimes childrens production is ahead of their
  comprehension.

Example If-then statements
The may be able to say things like, If I eat all
my spinach, I can have ice cream for dessert
while still not understanding the full
implications of if-then statements.
(In fact, many adults dont understand them
either until they take a logic class.) A version
of if-then statements tends to appear on IQ
tests If all As are Bs, and some Bs are Cs, then
are all As Cs?
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A cautionary note

• Sometimes childrens production is ahead of their
  comprehension.

Example If-then statements
The may be able to say things like, If I eat all
my spinach, I can have ice cream for dessert
while still not understanding the full
implications of if-then statements.
If all As are Bs, and some Bs are Cs, then are
all As Cs?
B
Not necessarily
C
A
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Syntax Morphology Development Recap

• Children progress from single word utterances to
  multiword utterances, learning to combine items
  in their lexicon in a productive manner to
  express the meanings they want.
• Childrens developmental patterns tend to follow
  predictable paths, demonstrating their gradual
  acquisition of more grammatical knowledge.
• Children seem to have acquired a very complex
  system of grammar at a very young age, though it
  is not necessarily the complete adult system.

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Questions?